Heretofore, when the coating needed to be removed from the optical fiber of an optical fiber cable so that it can be terminated with a connector assembly or terminals, it typically involved using electrical wire stripping techniques or the fiber was simply dipped and withdrawn from a chemical stripping solution by hand.
Mechanical fiber coating removal techniques, however, can nick, scratch, score or otherwise damage extremely small and fragile optical fibers. Such damage is difficult to detect and can result in a latent defect in the cable which is unacceptable in high reliability applications. Hand held chemical removal techniques also do not provide the control necessary to strip the fiber coating to precise lengths, and generally do not produce sharp, well defined edges or interfaces between the optical fiber and the fiber coating.